President defends ban on Cuba visits

Posted on Tue, Apr. 25, 2006

U.S. POLICY ON CUBA
President defends ban on Cuba visits
A Cuban American in California asked President Bush: How can we trade
with China and Vietnam, but not allow visits to Cuba?
BY LESLEY CLARK
lclark@MiamiHerald.com

WASHINGTON - President Bush defended his administration's travel ban to
Cuba on Monday, telling a Cuban American who suggested that visits to
the island would topple Fidel Castro that ``trade with the country
enables a tyrant to stay in power.''

The remarks came as Bush campaigned in California, urging Congress to
revive a stalled immigration plan that would provide a means to
citizenship for some illegal immigrants.

The man who posed the question told Bush that he emigrated from Cuba as
a 9-year-old, but wants to go home to ``see my front door that was
bullet-riddled when they were fighting Batista's guys.''

''I don't understand, how can we trade with Vietnam -- we lost over
50,000 Americans there -- how can we trade with communist China, we
can't even go to Cuba?'' said the man, who was not identified by a White
House transcript of the event at the Hyatt Regency in Irvine. ``And I
think if the borders were opened up with Cuba and American enterprise
got to go down there, I think Castro would fall like a rock off a cliff.''

CHANGED IN 2004

The controversial travel ban -- tightened in 2004 after complaints from
Cuban Americans in Miami that the administration was not tough enough on
Castro -- cut family visits to Cuba by Cuban Americans from once a year
to once every three years. Congressional critics have long tried to
relax the travel ban and Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry at
the time criticized the move as harmful to families, saying he would
encourage ''principled travel'' to the island.

Bush defended the ban, saying it was keeping money out of Castro's hands.

''Fidel Castro has got the capacity to arbitrage your dollars to the
advantage of his administration,'' Bush said. ``You pay in dollars, he
pays in Cuban money and collects the difference. So you go to a hotel in
Havana, the money goes to the hotel, which has kind of got a deal with
the government in order to be there in the first place, and the workers
get paid in a currency that's worthless compared to the U.S. dollar. And
he makes the balance.

`A TYRANT'

''And so, in all due respect, I have taken the position that trade with
the country enables a tyrant to stay in power, as opposed to the
opposite,'' Bush said.

``Honest disagreement of opinion -- I fully recognize -- but that's why
I made the decision I made.''

Jake Colvin, director of USA*Engage, a coalition of groups opposed to
unilateral sanctions, noted the remarks came days after Bush talked
trade with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

''A lot of U.S. money goes to bad people in a lot of regimes,'' Colvin
said. ``But despite what the president says, a U.S. presence there would
be more a factor prompting democracy and human rights.''

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